Do you have any tattoos or piercings? Do you want any?
My ears are pierced, and they used to be pierced in a lot of places, including in the inside. When I stopped being rebellious on purpose to make my parents crazy, I let those holes grow up.
I have no tattoos, but I want one. I'm kind of a wimp, so I haven't gotten one yet. I want a daffodil. Also, besides being a wimp, I also can't think of anywhere on my body that either still looks perky or will look perky forever, so I am nervous about a droopy, wilting daffodil!
Given your view of sex as a good thing that shouldn't be considered shameful or wrong, at what point do you expect Livy to start having sexual relationships? Will you be teaching her about birth control and sexual safety at puberty or some other time?
Interesting. In some ways we have already started talking about birth control and safe sex. She has asked me to please have another baby, and I have explained how Aaron and I aren't planning on doing that and how because some smarty invented a way to have sex and not get pregnant, we don't have to! I explained vasectomies in detail because that's so neat-o. I have no idea how much of that she took in because she was pouty about no more babies at the time. :)
As far as sexual relationships, I don't know when she will begin to have them. I would expect it would be in her teenage years, but I wouldn't be opposed to her waiting longer either.
Since kids mature sexually long before they become legal grownups, I think it is unrealistic to expect them not to be having sex. It's fun, it feels really good, and their biology will be driving them to want it in a serious way for YEARS before they move out and start living as an adult. So, my plan is to raise as mature a child as possible, talk with her about birth control and abortion and sexually transmitted diseases and the potential emotional consequences of sex long before she might have it (before puberty for sure), and then rejoice with her in the good feelings sex brings.
I do think puberty is too late, especially if that is the first sex talk of any kind. I think sex, like nutrition and good philosophy, should be talked about all through a child's life, whenever the subject arises because of the child's interest, something the adult wants to explain, or something seen on TV or read in a book.
You mentioned that you wished Ayn Rand had consulted with some parents before writing the sections in ItOE about children. Which parts do you take issue with, and why? by shlevy
I was thinking that I had read in ITOE a section about the timing of children moving from sensation, to perception, to concepts. I can't find it, so I suspect it might be in some other book. I am pretty sure I read it in an Objectivist book, but I have not proof.
Anyway, here is the timing I see: Infants are born already in the perceptual phase. They immediately are able to discriminate between different sensations and organize them into percepts, recognizing mom's voice, moving toward the nipples, etc. I've even read that babies can distinguish between different kinds of sound in the womb, but I don't know if that is true. So, they begin to organize sensations into percepts much earlier than whatever I read in that mystery book (which seemed to say infants were purely sensation). I also remember reading in the same passage that children become conceptual about the time they learn to speak, and this is definitely untrue. Because of using baby signs, it was clear to me that Sean (Rational Jenn's last baby) was conceptual several months before he learned to speak. He not only used signs, but used a vroom, vroom car sound to mean car and applied it not just to one or two cars but to all cars with the measurements omitted.
Anyway, I wish I could know where I read what I read. If anyone has any idea, please let me know.
What's your favorite Shakespeare play or poem? by rationaljenn
I'm not the hugest fan of reading Shakespeare. I don't usually like to read and study plays. But I love to see Shakespeare on stage. My favorite play is The Tempest. I also love King Lear, Much Ado About Nothing, and the Henry histories.
As for his poems, my favorite is Sonnet 73: http://poetry.eserver.org/sonnets/073.html.
You’re on a desert island. You can pick one author to be stranded with—not the author’s books, the man or woman him- or herself. Which author would you choose as your companion? ~Ans
I would probably not choose an author, for two reasons.
1. I'd choose an engineer/inventor type because I want to have lots of cool stuff to help me live on the island.
2. I tend to be attracted (both in love and in friendship) to people who are sciency and left-brained. I would probably enjoy my time more with someone like this. Plus, without any other resources for entertainment, wouldn't it be better to be stranded with someone who knew all the opposite things from you so that you could have what's in his brain to learn and keep you entertained?
If you are going to make me choose an author in this hypothetical, I don't know what to say. It's the books I'm interested in, and of the writers I know lots about, I can't think of one I'd like to live alone with on an island.
Off the top of my head, I think Samuel Johnson would be pretty entertaining. He's the best I can come up with, but he was kind of a jerk sometimes, so maybe not.
What gives you the best sense of accomplishment (outside of parenting)?
Actually, parenting does not give me the best sense of accomplishment, except in general terms. It isn't my primary career. Teaching is.
For now, most of my formal teaching happens in the gymnastics class I teach for university students studying to become P.E. teachers. I designed the class to teach them the basic skills of gymnastics and to teach them how to teach gymnastics to their future students.
My favorite thing in the class is when I am able to explain to my students how to break down a skill and convey it in the most simple way to their students. I am able to initiate them into the essence of teaching; figuring out the smallest pieces of the knowledge and figuring out how to convey it.
I love it when I find exactly the right words for a particular student and when I see the knowledge click into place in their minds. I love this when dealing with gymnastics, and I can't imagine how much I am going to love it when I am teaching writing and literature.
In a close second and third would be the moments when my daughter and I solve a problem together in a way that makes both of us happy (but you said no parenting, so ignore that) and when I have been struggling over a piece of a novel or poem and finally get it. The point comes home to me, and the quote or the feeling of the passage really belongs to me forever.
The Navier-Stokes equations describe fluid flow. Do these equations have solutions that last for all time, given arbitrary sufficiently nice initial data? Or do singularities develop in the fluid flow, which prevent the solution from continuing?
Nothing, not even equations, have solutions that last for all time. Didn't you know that we are all just dust in the wind? Here's a Robert Frost poem to enlighten you further on the constant change which is life for humans and for Navier-Stokes equations:
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leafs a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
